Black District Attorney Says No Charges For LAPD Officer Who Shot and Killed Unarmed Homeless Man

Jackie Lacey failed Los Angeles again.

In May of 2015, Brandon Glenn, 29, was shot and killed by a LAPD police officer. He was an unarmed homeless man and there has not been a reason given why he was shot. The Los Angeles Times reported, “Security video of a deadly encounter between two LAPD officers and an unarmed homeless man in Venice shows a brief struggle between the officers and the man but does not explain why one officer stepped away and opened fire, law enforcement sources said.” The outlet continued, “The recording shows the officer standing up and moving away from the Tuesday night altercation, ultimately standing a few feet away from the man when he fired what appeared to be two shots, the sources said.”

Now, three years later, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who is a Black woman, said in a statement, “After an independent and thorough review of all the evidence in this case, we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Proctor did not act within the law.”

Lacey has a long history of not seeing injustice in the murder of Black men by police. She is Los Angles first Black D.A. and The Los Angeles Times reported, “The decisions, and the larger issue of how prosecutors deal with police force, weigh heavily on the otherwise popular Lacey, who this year became the county’s first district attorney to win reelection without a challenger in 60 years.. Her office has not filed charges against an officer in an on-duty shooting in more than 15 years,long before she took the helm. But Lacey has drawn especially forceful criticism from some African American activists who say they feel she has failed them.”